Commercial airlines are highly regulated to ensure public's security. One aspect of the security measures requires regular training and evaluation of the pilots. Pilots are trained in a controlled environment called a flight simulator.
Flight simulators recreate the cockpit and overall environment experience in which the pilots fly aircrafts. Flight simulators recreate the look and feel of the instruments in the cockpit, the out-of window view available before, during and after a flight, as well as the movements of the aircraft felt in the cockpit.
One of the numerous challenges when building a flight simulator lies in providing a realistic out-of-window view. Many factors concur for creating a realistic out-of window view. A first criteria is related to the field of view provided to a pilot in an aircraft. Typically, a pilot has a 220° field of view, i.e. 110° on each side of the nose of the plane. Secondly, to recreate the feeling of depth in the out-of window view presented to the pilot, images to be displayed are projected on a large curved rear-projection screen and which is viewed by a large reflective surface which is positioned at a certain distance from the pilot. Thirdly, the display system can be mounted on a moving simulator platform or be fixed in place and non-moving.
To overcome these challenges, many flight simulators manufacturers use a flexible reflective surface made of MYLAR®. MYLAR® is lightweight and can be somewhat curved. However, as Mylar stretches, it is not possible to achieve a perfect curvature and as a result the out-of window view displayed to the pilot is distorted in some areas.
Other flight simulators manufacturers use sheets of mirrors, installed one next to another, to form the reflective surface. However, because of the inherent movement of the flight simulator, a slight gap is left between the sheets of mirrors to prevent scraping, chipping and breaking of the edges of one sheet of mirror with the adjacent sheet of mirror. As no image is reflected by the gap between the sheets of mirrors, the gap can be visually perceived by the pilot in the flight simulator. The gap negatively affects the realism of the out-of window view of the pilot in the flight simulator, and is considered annoying by some.
There is therefore a need for improving the out-of window view presented to a pilot during training or evaluation in a flight simulator.